


Adaptation

by tigs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-05
Updated: 2007-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigs/pseuds/tigs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first week, Dean told himself that he was glad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adaptation

i.  
The first week, Dean told himself that he was glad.

No Sam meant no coming back to the hotel room after an evening spent staking out a graveyard, or an abandoned mill, or maybe having a few drinks at a local bar, only to find Sam and his dad fighting again.

No Sam meant no more Sam and Dad being at each other's throats all the time. No more yelling, no more words that couldn't be taken back being said. No more Dean wondering when the end, the final straw would come.

No Sam meant that he didn't have to wonder anymore.

Besides, if Sam wanted to tell the two of them, Dean and their dad, to go fuck themselves--which, as Dean saw it, was pretty much what he'd done--it meant Dean could think things like, Fuck you, Sammy. Fuck you too.

ii.  
The second week, he made a list of reasons that Sam being gone was a good thing:

1) He didn't have to listen to Sammy bitch about his music choices any longer. If Dean wanted to listen to--what had Sam taken to calling it in the weeks before he'd left?--the greatest hits of mullet rock on repeat, then Dean would damn well listen to them on repeat.

2) He could go farther than 100 miles (or two hours, whichever came first) without Sam starting in on their dad. (See also: the gladness of last week.) He sure as hell didn't miss that.

3) He could spend as much time out on the open road as he wanted to, and didn't have to listen to any more conversations where Sam asked them to settle down, no matter how many times Dean and their dad told him that this life just wasn't about settling. That he needed to accept that *now*, what with it being the family business and all.

4) He didn't have to feel guilty any longer, watching Sammy watch yet another town disappear in the rearview mirror, his face set in hard, unhappy lines.

5) When they were out hunting, he didn't have to keep track of Sam anymore. He didn't have to spend that extra second making sure Sam was safe, or out of the way. He could just go in there and do his job. Even if most of the time, he still found himself taking that extra second to look, to just make sure. Then another second to remember why it was okay that he couldn't see Sam anywhere. That, he was sure, would fade.

iii.  
The third week, he woke up from a dream involving Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and a jar of cherries, rolled over on his bed, and got as far as saying, "Hey, Sammy. You'll never guess the dream I just had--" before he realized the person in the other bed was his dad, not Sam.

iv.  
The fourth week, Dean made another list: things he hadn't been expecting after Sam left.

1) That he'd start making lists of things to tell Sam the next time they talked. Stupid shit, like the comb-over that hotel clerk two towns back had been sporting, or the legs on one of the Walmart checkout girls, and how she'd written her number on his receipt when he'd swiped Burt Carter's card.

2) That earlier that week, no matter how many times he'd told himself he wouldn't--that Sam would have to be the one to crack first--he'd gotten nine digits into dialing Sam's dorm room at Stanford before he'd hung up the phone.

3) That Dad would still have that haunted, impatient look in his eye. The look that said he needed to be on the road right the fuck now, despite the fact that Dean was with him, and Dean was always ready to go.

v.  
The fifth week, Dean dreamed of one of Dad and Sam's fights, and realized that those were more words--shouted, growled, imagined--than he'd heard his dad speak in one go since Sam had hopped the bus out to California.

vi.  
It was habit now, reading as many local papers as they could get their hands on, and during the sixth week, Dean saw something in the _Oak Hill Clarion_ that was probably worth checking out. Kid drowned in a lake, the survivors claiming to see a light hovering over the water.

When he mentioned it to his dad, though, his dad just rubbed his fingers over his beard, looked out the window of the diner, seeing things, thinking things, knowing things that Dean couldn't.

He was almost braced for it when Dad said, "You know, Dean, you know what you're doing. You could head on out that way yourself. Check it out. We could meet up again in a few weeks, because I have--" He said more, Dean knew he did, but he didn't hear it. He heard, 'yourself', and 'few weeks', and he thought he should be feeling proud, that Dad trusted him like that.

Instead he just swallowed, said, "Yeah. Okay. Yeah."

vii.  
The seventh (or maybe first) week, Dean told himself he was glad. Just him and his car out on the road. No one to bitch about the music, no one he needed to look out for.

Yeah, he was glad.


End file.
